The town and country concept cannot be made to work without a cooperative transportation system. Transportation planning in the town and country context must be proactive in order to help encourage a desirable distribution of new development   through the region, rather than simply reacting to the traffic demands of current   development trends.

The transportation system consists of four basic components: roadway system, transit system, pedestrian system, and bicycle system. The desired physical quality of each of these systems varies with specific geographic and social contexts. The different “district types” on the accompanying matrix—the historic center, urban villages, suburban villages, existing towns and neighborhoods, new villages, country, and preservation areas—provide an approximation of these varying contexts.  See Figure 8-1. The transportation system not only supports these districts, but also plays a very large role in helping to define them.

The following text elaborates on important points from the matrix, describing the site-specific characteristics of the transportation system for each type of district established by the town and country vision. The discussion begins with a section describing the roadway system, followed by sections on transit, pedestrians, and bicycles.

8.1 Roadway System

The recurring essential theme of the following discussion about roadways is connectivity. Good connectivity maximizes the efficiency of the transportation network, facilitating local and regional circulation. In short, maximal connectivity is attained through minimal occurrences of cul-de-sacs; dead-end streets, isolated pod developments, and poorly connected subdivisions. When too many of these elements exist in a region, severe stress is placed on the few main arteries that hold them together. These arteries must then be widened to five or six lanes or larger to handle the heavy regional and local traffic demands placed onto them. Even then, the concentration of 30,000 or more daily vehicles onto each of these roadways invites continued strip development, which induces even more traffic.

Encouragingly, Richland County has shown strong support for the principle of enhanced connectivity in its 1993 document entitled Addendum to the Long-Range Major Street Plan, in which numerous street connections and extensions are proposed throughout the County. In addition to funding and constructing new connectors, other policy issues to pursue are: emphasize minimum, not maximum, network connections for new developments; revise minimum street widths (as laid out  in the Land Development Regulations) to support traffic calming efforts designed to deter cut-through traffic in neighborhoods; and revisit long-range transportation plans  to examine alternatives to widening existing thoroughfares.